


keloids/open wounds

by lonelyghosts



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (she doesnt know it yet), Child Abuse, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Season/Series 01, Trans Dean Winchester, Transfeminine Sam Winchester, Transmisogyny, Transphobia, it turns out abuse can manifest itself differently!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: Your brother remembers things differently than you do.(Or: two wounds, two siblings, and a lack of language).
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 17
Kudos: 120





	keloids/open wounds

**Author's Note:**

> i had to rewatch bugs for this. You should all thank me for what ive endured
> 
> anyways this is a study of the different ways sam and dean were affected by john's parenting and the ways that affected them and their relationship considering neither of them understand the ways in which the other was abused or their reactions to the abuse. inspired by [this post](https://vriskadyke.tumblr.com/post/638082505942204416/notquiteaghost-tesselatingtoads) as well as [this post](https://vriskadyke.tumblr.com/post/638063847937392640/i-just-rewatched-114-nightmare-the-episode-where).

Your younger brother remembers things differently than you do. Or rather, he has nothing to remember, the way you do. That is the crux of it. You wonder, sometimes, how he can be so blind: how those eyes can look into yours and have no memory of the things that wring you dry.

You are standing outside a dead boy's house. He was like your brother, too- blood in his mouth, something inhuman under his skin, the faint memory of a dead father's bruises still yellowing on his skin. Dirty. You see the way Sam scratches at the inside of his wrists, like he'll find something if he just digs deep enough. You don't know how to stop him. You are not very good at preventing pain- you just follow its trail to the source and kill it, the way Dad taught you.

Now, inside, the boy's stepmother wails in feigned grief over his corpse and you think: lady, you watched your husband beat that boy half to death in silence. Smoked a cigarette while it was happening. Chopped vegetables as he screamed for help. You have no right to sob over his suicide.

Sam shoves those big hands into leather coat pockets. He says: if Dad had been different. If he had drunk more, maybe. More tequila. Less of the monster hunting. All things considered, at least he did not lay his hands on us like that.

You burn silent. Your mouth won't open. You cannot bring yourself to say what he expects to hear- you just grit your jaw. Underneath your hairline, there is a scar that still itches, restless, from where he hit you with a beer bottle when you asked if he would be gone long, this time. You stitched it yourself, grit teeth, cursing under your breath as you angled it in the mirror. You could still hear the sound of his apology in your ears, the way he'd ripped it out from himself like a new wound, and told yourself that he was the one who was hurting, truly.

So many times you felt his gaze on you like a hot knife- the first time you cut your hair and he wept and hit you open-palmed because you didn't look like your mother any longer, when you shortened your name to a boy's- god, the things he said when you told him you were a boy, not a girl. You told him second, after Sammy- after those brown eyes had closed, asleep curled up in a motel bed. You and your father had gone out to the car and he'd left your ribs black with bruises. He never said a word about it, after: never stopped you from cutting your hair, but you could feel the hot humiliation on your neck every time he said  _ Deanna.  _

You were a bad son, even disregarding the fact that you had not always been his son- disregarding that you would never truly be his son, not in his own eyes. You questioned him, once, when you asked if he was going to leave some money when he left you alone for a week this time, and he made it clear how ungrateful you were- didn't he give you a roof over your heads? Wasn't there food in the shitty motel fridge? You were treated like a soldier and punished like one too. When you questioned him, when you stepped in the way of his fist for Sam, who is maybe your sibling by blood but has become more like your own child. When you were not good enough, which was often. You have so many bruises.

You were a lieutenant under your father's roof- Sam your trenchmate. Sam who you are responsible for. You know he hurts too- you have seen Sammy shaking in the night, seen him weep with helpless rage as your father storms out after a fight. But he never bled under your father's hand if you could help it. You spent most of your childhood and most of your adult life trying to be your brother's shield, and that's maybe the only good thing you've ever succeeded at. Not at being a good soldier, or a good son- but you are still Sam's protector. You hold on to that. 

But Sam, he doesn't know this- he looks back at the crumbling house of the boy who was like the two of you combined, and you look away, and say nothing. You keep your silence- you do not speak ill of the missing, presumed dead. Especially not when it's your fault, anyways. Your fault that it happened in the first place- your fault that the hurt in you keeps growing, even after your skin's scarred over. 

(You think that someday, you won't be anything except that pain. Someday, you will be all scar tissue.)

* * *

Your older brother remembers things differently than you do. Or rather, he would like to- would like to bury everything deep. That is the crux of the issue. You wonder how it feels to close your eyes to things, the way he does: how he can pretend that everything is alright.

The boy calls his father by his first name. "Not exactly brochure material," he says, and there is a bitter pain in his voice that you recognize. You think of the weight of the tarantula in your hand, the soft fur of its legs against your skin. You are well acquainted with being the black sheep of a family.

"It gets better," you say, because you don't know what else to say. It has gotten better, yes, that's not a lie- but mostly because your father is missing, probably dead even if Dean insists otherwise. It's only better because you got away, and this boy- fifteen, sixteen if you're generous- is a three years and a lifetime from getting away.

And it must show on your face, because the boy laughs, thick in his throat. "When?" he asks. You don't have an answer.

His father swoops in and hisses " _ Matthew _ " and you flinch because it sounds just like the way your father snapped your full name like a whip, the way  _ Samuel  _ made you curl in on yourself. Even for reasons other than the way you keep shaving yourself till you bleed, unsatisfied with even the slightest stubble. You are very good at flinching from that name. You have had lots of practice.

That hand, around the arm, tugging the boy away. You can practically hear his father's voice saying that he's not fit for polite company, which is funny, because you are not polite company. Dragged into the house by his heels, and you think of hotel rooms that shook under the weight of your father's yelling. Your brother comes to your side and bitterness wells in your stomach. Acid kisses your throat.

"Remind you of anybody?" you ask, and you know he won't say your father's name, the way you want him to, but you can't help it. You want an acknowledgement. You want someone to look at the way you spent your whole life with bloodstains on your shoes. 

"Dad never treated us like that," he says, and you think: well, not you. Not you, golden boy. You were always his favorite. You were always the good boy. 

Once when you were fifteen you snuck into your father's journal and read about how he thought you were a monster, and you spent the next three hours trying to claw the dirt out of yourself. You have had deaths on your conscience since you were six months old. 

There is smoke in you, black and thick and coiling, and you think you might choke on it. You can't eat fries without spitting up blood in the bathroom an hour later, knuckles clenched around porcelain sinks, looking at the creature in the mirror and wondering what kind of monster it is.

Dean is good at shutting his eyes. He takes your father's palm on his cheek like a man does- the pink raised handprint on his cheek never fazes him. He can't understand you: the way you find yourself rising with a rage that is anything but righteous when you hear a raised voice. The way you can't help but want to find some justice. He never understood why you went to law school. 

He doesn't understand how you are always going to be crushed flowers under your father's boot. You can remember specific examples- the time you came home from school with pink nail polish on and your father screamed for two hours. You cried, in the bathroom, afterwards, and Dean rubbed your back and said: You can't keep making him mad, Sammy.

How to explain a lifetime of this to him: forced buzzcuts as you tried not to weep over the soft baby brown curls that fell to the tile floor. Fights in bars, in monster dens, on public sidewalks. The way your father spent your childhood shining lights in your eyes and inspecting them for black. Dean binds his chest in the bathroom and Dad doesn't say a word but you wore a pink blazer once and he called you a slur in the middle of a public library. You do not know how to heal. You do not know how to stop bleeding. 

This is not to say your brother is not bruised too. He is. You saw him flinch from open handed slaps. You saw the blood dripping down his chin onto the shaggy carpet of a motel room- just another stain. But he takes his blows like a man does. You are not the man Dean is.

Your brother looks at you like you have gone crazy. That is maybe the worst part. Then he says, "Yeah, well, maybe he had to raise his voice sometimes, but you were out of line," and you revise your assessment. That is the worst part.

The worst part is that in the end, you know he's right. You can't stop yourself from being a bad son, even though you don't mean to be. You are a monster, whether it's because of the length of your hair or the impurity that you feel in your own blood. Your father strips you of your skin and leaves you a bloody mess of hurt and shame and self hatred. You have seen more painful methods for killing a monster, though none of them last quite this long.

But Dean, of course, refuses to see this. He calls bowhunting an important skill and you look away, turn the conversation to the tour of this bug-infested development. You let it go- you don't poke at open wounds, anyways. This picking, this peeling at the edges, it doesn't help. You're supposed to let it heal, for the missing and presumed dead. Your fault, in the end, that it still hurts- that you keep bleeding. Your fault that it can't heal. 

(You think that someday, you will have nothing left inside of you. Someday, you will finally be bled empty; empty, yes, and clean.)


End file.
